Just had a terrible thought about Bioshock

[Vympel]

It's no secret that eventually we're all going to have to move over to Vista if we haven't already, because the new games that come out will all require DX10 soon enough.

Microsoft tried to force the issue with Halo 2 for PC, but just like the Halo PC version, it sucked, and was obviously designed purely as a vehicle for pushing Vista/DX10 on reluctant gamers, and had nothing DX10 specific (unsurpringly, Halo 2 can now run on WinXP/DX9).

Will Bioshock require Vista? I just don't want to move over to Vista yet. I can see the driver and the backwards compatibility problems with all my old games coming from a mile off.

EDIT:

Of course, by old I mostly mean those games which I had on my old PC which were a little too good for it, hence I had to turn the settings/detail down - which is why I'm playing so many of those old games over lately! just in case I'll never get the chance to play them again on a proper beast system before Vista comes out.

What is the support situation for DX10 among games currently - will they support it but not make DX10 exclusive games for a while? I can't imagine, right now, that many gamers are eager to make the change, so making games releases DX10 exclusive instead of merely capable could hurt sales for publishers.

[Enigma]

It's no secret that eventually we're all going to have to move over to Vista if we haven't already, because the new games that come out will all require DX10 soon enough.

Microsoft tried to force the issue with Halo 2 for PC, but just like the Halo PC version, it sucked, and was obviously designed purely as a vehicle for pushing Vista/DX10 on reluctant gamers, and had nothing DX10 specific (unsurpringly, Halo 2 can now run on WinXP/DX9).

Will Bioshock require Vista? I just don't want to move over to Vista yet. I can see the driver and the backwards compatibility problems with all my old games coming from a mile off.

I would not be surprised. I remembered the same thing happened with Thief 3 when XP was relatively new. At the time I had ME and when I went to check out Thief 3 I noticed it said XP only. It will be a matter of time until that happens.

[Vympel]

Erm- you sure? Thief 3 came out in 2004. You were using ME in 2004???

That's actually pretty good, since XP had been out for years by then.

[weemadando]

Well, Geometry Wars has been revised and released on XP after the devs obviously realised that no one was willing to buy Vista just to play games yet.

I can't see why someone who's not Microsoft Games Studio would cripple themselves by platform limitation like that.

[Enigma]

Erm- you sure? Thief 3 came out in 2004. You were using ME in 2004???

That's actually pretty good, since XP had been out for years by then.

really? Oopsie.

As for ME, I've been using it until 2005 when I finally could afford XP.

[Vympel]

2005? Hah- might as well have waited for Vista to come out.

[InnocentBystander]

Very few game developers are making games with *only* directX 10 support (in fact, I don't know of any, other than this halo 2 garbage). Developers need to sell their games to lots of people to make money, and there just aren't that many people who are going to buy vista only games.

That being said, to take advantage of newer, more modern graphics you are going to need to upgrade. You can still play Crysis and UE3 and Source in dx9 and have plenty of fun. However, if you want to take advantage of the true power that new graphics cards support and the new fancyness that comes with directX 10 then you will, eventually, be forced to buy Vista.

Its not like vista is such an awful thing. On the whole it works fine, I've had a grand total of 1 issue with it in the months I've used it - Skype caused it to reboot randomy (ya, thats pretty bad I know). If your computer illiterate then I can understand the great big fear you have of all your little widgets not working and whatever, but I think anyone who is competent enough to install and play a game is competent enough to find the necessary driver updates required to make their system run in vista. It's pretty lame that you can run visual studio 2003 in vista, but big deal.

When you're ready to upgrade to directX 10 vista will be there and you'll realize, like I did, that the transition is ridiculously easy. You've got to reinstall your apps, thats true... but so what?

[Zixinus]

I remember that Bioshock will be DirectX 9 compatible. It will have futures that take advantage of DirectX 10, but you should still be able to play the game on XP. How well, that remains to be seen.

[Ace Pace]

Very few game developers are making games with *only* directX 10 support (in fact, I don't know of any, other than this halo 2 garbage). Developers need to sell their games to lots of people to make money, and there just aren't that many people who are going to buy vista only games.

Halo 2 is not DX10, but just locked to work only on Windows Vista. If that was DX10, I'd join in on everyone bashing it. Thankfully, it's not.

[Shogoki]

Halo 2 is a scam when it comes to DX10, i don't think anyone can deny it.
Funny enough, if you guys remember, Halo for PC was also a scam when it came to DX9, it was a system requirement despite the fact that it did absolutely nothing with DX9, even if you did have a DX9 card (which were still somewhat rare back then) the game would run awful on that mode.

Everyone was better off modding it to force it into DX8 mode, as it made no noticeable difference on graphic quality what so ever.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Even the games that support both DX9 and 10 don't show any noticeable DX10 advantage yet, either in eye candy or performance. It will take a lot of time before the people with DX9 cards are locked out, so long that their cards will be obsolete and wouldn't have been able to run the games anyway. Making an unnecessary upgrade to get DX10 support would be absolutely idiotic.

[Bugsby]

I haven't had any problems with Vista. I got it like 3 months ago with my new computer when it was still relatively new and there were one or two minor driver issues that hadn't gotten worked out yet. But by and large, Vista is good these days. Enough people are making the switch that software companies have felt the pressure to make everything Vista-compatible, and have responded.

As to your original problem of DX10 support, I imagine that most games that come out - at least for the next year or so, will run fine on DX9 for XP, because most of the market hasn't made the switch. But in a year or so, once there is a substantial Vista mass out there, games are going to start requiring DX10. They will want to use the more powerful program, and as Vista becomes more prevalent, they will have no real need to keep games running on DX9.

My advice? Buy Vista - in 6 months.

[Drooling Iguana]

I guess now would be a good time to start weaning myself off Windows games entirely, then. I'll just stick with console games for anything that doesn't run in Linux.

[InnocentBystander]

I guess now would be a good time to start weaning myself off Windows games entirely, then. I'll just stick with console games for anything that doesn't run in Linux.

Excellent plan!